This is our passion. That's the spirit we bring to this show. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm Brian Campbell. This is Morning Combat.

Oh, MK has officially turned back into a pumpkin. Here we are doing what we do in the place where we do it in our homes. Hi, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas. It's the 14th of January, 2022. Can you believe we're already two weeks into the New Year? Jesus Christ. Where does the time go? As I mentioned, my name is Luke Thomas, and this is episode of think 252 of Morning Combat. If you're watching on YouTube, give it a thumbs up. If you are listening,

on a podcast platform, whatever platform it's on, please give us a nice review and a nice star rating there wherever that may be. You can see it right there as well. You want to give us a vote for your best sports podcast. Pull up one more time. Sports podcast awards. I think is what there was before. I mean, he kind of jumped the gun there, putting it up there before I was ready. But that's okay. There we go. Sports podcast awards.com. You can vote for us there as well. BC is out today. I think he will be back on Monday. I think

that's right. We'll have to see. But yes, he is out today. So we'll talk to him. No, excuse me. Actually, Monday we're off. So you won't see BC until Wednesday. Let me give you a bit of a calendar update on the show. We'll have today's show. I'll do a bit of a chat on today's show. Then tomorrow, I know the card kind of sucks, but I'm actually going to do a bit of a post fight show for the Chakazee cater fight. It won't be very long. Obviously, because the card's not that great. Probably 20, 30 minutes, maybe 45 at most. If you have a bunch of questions,

or something like that. And then Monday, the new resume review will be out. And then Tuesday, we're going to hit you with another video. So that's the plan tentatively. BC is out today. I apologize for that. He will be back Wednesday. I'll be back Wednesday. No, Monday show, because it's MLK day. But we will have immediate reaction for you for the weekend's fights. And then something to sink your teeth into as we headed to UFC 270 fight week. Okay. It's pretty good trade off. Okay. As I mentioned, thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe if you're watching on YouTube. If you would like to get some

merch, you certainly may. You can go to morningcombat.store. I'm not wearing any merch today, but we do have something that I'm told is in fact pretty good. You want to try a showtime? You certainly can showtime.com. Get a 30 day free trial. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can go pound all of the sand. Yes. Okay. All right. So with the way today is going to work. We'll keep it nice and light relatively informal. I asked for a list of questions. You guys gave some. We had a show plan. BC was supposed

to be here. Then things kind of got changed at the last second. So we had to switch it up a little bit. But you guys left a bunch of questions. I'll pick from some of them. My producers picked from some of them and we'll answer. And then we'll go down the line. Before I even start though with any of those, I know there are fights tomorrow. The weigh-ins. I think start in an hour. The weigh-ins for tomorrow's event. So if there's any news related to anyone not making it or missing weight or whatever the case may be, we'll obviously let you know during the course of this broadcast. But before we even get into the

questions that you gave to me and that my producers picked, I did want to talk about the weekend's main event at a bare minimum before the questions. Obviously Calvin Cater, main event taking on Gigachikaze. I did find some odds and the odds that we have, according to my intrepid production team, they've got

Gigachikaze sitting at a minus 235 and Cater at a plus 190. Cater opened at a plus 150 with Gigachikaze at a minus 175. So the movement has been towards Gigachikaze, certainly. And people expecting him to do quite well.

I suspect this is going to be a tough fight for Calvin Cater to win. I think the reason why we talked about it a little bit earlier in the week coming off of a historic meeting. I actually have some of the numbers from that particular contest.

Let me pull that up here. If for folks who might need a little bit of a refresher on what happened against Max Holloway, Max landed attempted rather, I should say 746 strikes and landed 447 of them.

That is a absolute epic unreal beating. So that is in play about what kind of fight you're going to get. What kind of fighter you're going to get coming off of something like this?

That doesn't mean that they're ultimately ruined. We saw Francis and Garner was not ruined after the steep a fight, but the first one anyway, but the time he came back to take on Derek Lewis, he was simply unready for that kind of a contest.

And so the question is not necessarily whether Calvin Cater is done. I'm not asking that, but whether that kind of an event that he had prior to this one, it's just hard to imagine that doesn't have any carryover for this event.

Hard to say exactly with any degree of certainty, but it certainly feels that way. But when you talk about how the two match up, I think that's the most interesting component. First of all, we are going to be at the apex, which means it's the smaller cage. Certainly Chikaze has had more success of late even in the small cage. I do think on balance that should give some advantages to Cater provided he uses them, but I don't know that he will. Here's what I mean.

I think for Cater to win, like, where does Cater do his best work? He does his best work in mid-range in boxing range. He actually has pretty good boxing to recall it, but prior to the fight itself, there was some discussion about who's the best boxer in MMA as it Cater or as a Halloween or in a bare minimum, both had thrown their hat into the ring for discussion more broadly about who that belonged to because Cater is a good boxer. And the way he tends to work is in that mid-range boxing range.

And in particular, he does good work behind the jab. The jab is critical to what he does. And at first, he kind of single shots the jab. He's moving, he's setting it up, he's faking, he's fainting, but he's jabbing, single-shotting, getting in, getting out, seeing what it does for him. As the jab becomes a little bit more comfortable to execute, as it becomes a little bit easier for him to get into a rhythm, found a distance a little bit, begin to get some of your opponent's timing, right?

Then he begins to put shots behind it, right? A jab cross, a jab cross, left hook to the body. He's got a very good left hook to the body, you guys might recall.

That's the way he gets going. That's the range in which he traditionally occupies, and that's the way which his offense begins to cook.

So how did Max Holloway beat him? Get your causes a very different fighter, but how did Max Holloway beat him?

One of the biggest things that Max Holloway did was not just the overall amount of volume. Yes, it was a torrential downpour of offense.

But more than just that, which you'll notice is, remember, Cater is single jabbing to start.

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